Chapter 12 - The Empty Bed
The armored convoy sped back toward the city under the cover of a suffocating midnight fog.
Harper sat completely frozen in the plush leather seat of Vincent's SUV, her fingernails digging so deeply into her palms that she drew blood.
Vincent poured two glasses of bourbon from the vehicle's hidden console and handed her one.
He promised her that tomorrow they would transfer her mother from the nursing home to a private, world-class medical wing inside his estate.
Harper could not force herself to take a sip of the burning liquor.
She turned to Vincent with wide, desperate eyes and begged him to take her to the nursing home right now.
She insisted she needed to see her mother with her own eyes to truly believe they had survived the war.
Vincent hesitated, noting the raw hysteria bleeding into her voice, but eventually nodded to his driver to change their route.
They arrived at the quiet suburban medical facility twenty minutes later.
The parking lot was entirely devoid of life, lit only by flickering, amber streetlamps.
Vincent drew his sidearm the moment he noticed the front sliding glass doors were shattered completely off their tracks.
He ordered Harper to stay in the vehicle, but she threw her door open and sprinted blindly into the dark, silent building.
She ignored the shouts of his bodyguards as she ran frantically down the familiar linoleum hallway toward Room 412.
The heavy wooden door to her mother's suite was hanging open on a broken hinge.
Harper stumbled into the dark room and screamed.
The four elite, heavily armed men Vincent had sent to protect her mother were scattered across the floor in massive pools of blood.
The heart monitor by the bed was flatlining with a continuous, piercing beep.
But there was no body on the mattress.
The sheets were neatly folded back, and the heavy oxygen tank her mother supposedly needed to survive was hissing softly into the empty room.
Vincent stepped into the doorway behind her, his weapon raised, his eyes scanning the absolute slaughter with clinical precision.
He knelt beside his dead captain and examined the fatal bullet wounds grouped tightly in the center of the man's chest.
He stood up slowly, his face hardening into a terrifying mask of cold realization.
He looked at Harper and stated grimly that ordinary thugs did not shoot with this kind of elite precision.
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The men in this room had not been killed by a rival gang coming to kidnap a frail old woman.
They had been executed at point-blank range by the frail old woman herself.
